As they reach the pile of debris Nouk says "A crudely assembled barricade... looks like it didn't hold."

Upon arriving at operations Bormyn receives a briefing on the state of the station's systems.

"Sir, the CPU is online. Communications are down, not sure why yet. All the cargo ships and crew shuttles are in their hangars, intact. No sign of the staff."

Nouk speaks to Bormyn "Looks like they made their last stand here..."

Paxon then interrupts "Sir, looks like more funny droids are scurrying about."

Private Wierz jokes "Maybe you can collect a coat stand this time Paxon."

Paxon follows the signal and arrives at a securely sealed door, prompting Bormyn to order them to run a bypass to get it open.

The group enters the secure area and arrive in a bio-laboratory. Paxon approaches his motion tracker to a twitching Amani in a bacta tank but determines that it is not the source of the signal.

As Nouk takes in the grotesque sight of various sentient species connected to wires, he turns to the corporate representative "Mister Zurke, is the Wutandi corporation not aware of the Republic's laws against experimentation on live sentients?"

The team then enters an odd chamber, one with a powerful reactor connected to a surgical rack.

Nouk confronts Zurke again "I suppose you don't know what this is all about either?"

Zurke curtly denies knowing what the room is for when he is interrupted by a voice...

Nomi Taw emerges from the ducts under the floor with Jif and her droid and says "Well it's about time!"

She approaches Nouk and his party and says "Well are you going to help me up or should I levitate up there?"

After helping the feisty woman up Nouk says "Are you alright Miss? What's happened here, where are the others?"

Nomi responds "We're pretty much all that's left Mister, we had two more with us this morning but they were taken away when they ventured out too far to a hangar."

After introductions are made, and more questions are answered, Jif chimes in "The droids come and take people away, down into the tunnels under the tramways between station sections!"

Nouk asks "How have you managed to evade capture for so long?"

Nomi responds "It's thanks to my trusty little droid here, R2-D2, his receiver happened to be broken when all heck broke loose so whatever took control of all the other droids couldn't take control of him."

She continues "I was able to rig him to act as a motion detector with this antenna and terminal, works pretty well. The lamp we mounted on him has been pretty useful too."

You are obviosly putting a great deal of effort into this, the customs are superb and your diorama's are also excellent. I'm sure you are taking your story idea from a film, I can't quote put my finger on which one

Nice touch having the droid coming out from the shadows, it made me smile... I'm not too sure however if this is supposed to be a serious story or just a bit of fun...I'll go for a bit of fun, and as such it is a great piece of creative work. I have said this before and I will say it again, anyone who creates a photo novel deserves respect. You have a great deal of passion for the genre and your creative work reflects this by the bucketload, sure there are areas where you can improve, but on the whole the experience of reading your story and looking at the fantastic sets and characters is 99.9% of the fun.

Saying the above, my only criticism is your lack of consistency when it comes to lighting. A lot of your images are flood with lighting whereas others are more atmospheric. You obviously have an understanding of layers and effects as your droid lightning was a wonderful effect, dare I say it, the best lightning effect I've seen on a photo novel. You also created some very well lit shots as the marines entered the base with their torch lights, so adding an additional touch of creativity to your work across the board should be a relatively simple step forward. By applying these effects more liberally you should also be able to make your dioramas and dialogue scenes look more intense, and don't forget, practice makes perfect.

Try experimenting with cutting out figures, pasting them in a separate layer and blurring backgrounds, that way you'll focus on the character talking. You can also use the lighting effects tool to create a beam of light, or a light source coming at an angle, this will create much more atmosphere in your work and highlight the characters. If you want any on-line tutorials and you have SKYPE I'd be happy to show you some tricks.

To give you an example, below is an image of yours that I've done some very simple layer effects with..I first cut out the figure using the lasso tool then pasted it back onto the image, thus creating a separate layer, I then blurred the background layer, flattened the image and added the lighting effect. I used brightness and contrast to add more vibrancy, I also added a layer in screen mode where I painted eye reflections, this seems to bring the characters to life and adds much more depth to an image. These are simple effects to learn and apply. If you add a bit of spice to your images it will take your work to new heights...I'm sure that there are purists out there who hate the use of photoshop, I personally think it is a great tool and there is nothing wrong with adding some special effects to add a bit of magic.

If this post seems overly critical then that is not the intention. You are a valuable asset in this ever decreasing circle of artists, and even if you weren't to make any changes at all I absolutely love and enjoy your work.

Jules

Last edited by julianmaurice on Mon Jan 31, 2011 7:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

This is an AMAZING chapter! I really love these pre-Phantom Menace stories! I really love the "nod" to the film Aliens (I'm pretty sure that is the film ); it is subtle and has it's own story than just a simple rehashing-exactly what a nod to a film should be.

I also really love the customs and dioramas; I can really tell you are getting better as time goes on. I especially like how simple your customs are. It just goes to show that a simple kitbash can go a long way and can still give characters a life of their own!

My only real criticisms are the same as Jules, the lighting. I think maybe adding a little more lighting to your sets will really help in that regard. By the way, that is an awesome picture that Jules photoshopped for you.Granted, in my opinion, they do not take anything away from the story, and that is the most important part. I was a never big photoshop guy----- I always liked organic sets, lighting, and effects when I can, but I do realize at times, it is necessary to do so. But what he shoed you really does add depth and new life to the picture. I think that is way beyond my skills, but if you can figure it out and use it, oh man will your pn really be taken to the ultimate level!

I will definitely give this and your other new chapter a read through with proper feedback when I get an opportunity. As we've been discussing on the side, I've got a lot going on right now but this is high on my list.

Well DK, that was a fantastic read and it definitely was a great follow up to the last chapter.

I do have to say that I agree, some changes to the lighting could do wonders for the presentation of your work. You might not need to go the whole nine yards and do cutting and pasting a lot, but just more saturation/darkening of the images and sometimes changing the color hue can help a lot. I do that all the time and it really helped build the atmosphere in my own stories. The other thing, I think on some of the printouts there are spots where the edges are very visible, like in this shot:

With as much effort as you already put into this series, I hate to see a small thing like that take away from your presentation.

However, I think you deserve a hell of a lot more praise for this installment than suggestions.

I love the story as there is some tension building.

It's fantastic and has a great sense of light humor with it, which isn't overdone. It's not hard pressed humor - the way you present it makes it easy to enjoy and seems natural... Paxon is so damn hilarious, that head works so well... geeze man, I almost laughed out loud each time he was in a frame.

Also, Nomi is an interesting character, hope to see more of her... same goes for Jif. The nod to R2-D2 was also nice, I think that was well played if you're going to include a main character like him... that has to be the luckiest droid of all time.

I want to see more of Nouk Ki moving forward... right now he just seems to be tagging along, and I want to see him more involved... something about that Starkiller head though, I never liked the sculpt. Maybe it will grow on me over time though with your series.

Overally, I loved this chapter though DK. You bring a very fun style to the photonovel section. I know how much work goes into this stuff, and I wish everyone in the customizing community truly appreciated efforts like this.

I must confess to having mixed feelings about this chapter (and the next section, which I have read head to.)

While I really love your stories and think you're doing some great work here, I do think you're crossing a line by taking SO much of your story from another film.

This is something that I have spoken about for years in the comments section of many different photonovels, most recently Jason's "Vader's Quest". His last chapter was largely a re-telling of "Full Metal Jacket" in the context of SW.

I've also mentioned this even going back to some of Chewie's old chapters when he's used dialogue from the SW films in his stories.

While I think some well-placed inside jokes or homage can be delightful, I really think you're going overboard here.

So much of this is lifted directly from Aliens that I think you are depriving us of your own delightful and fertile imagination.

I have enjoyed the hell out of your previous efforts, you are one helluva storyteller, but seeing what is largely a retread of another story is so much less interesting to me than seeing your original work.

Take the character of Paxon, for example. I found myself getting quite restless at the lines of dialogue you gave him that came directly from Hudson. But, when you went and did your own thing, the results were terrific. I'm referring specifically to the running joke about the lampshade and coat rack. Great, clever and witty dialogue. And it was stuff YOU wrote, not stuff you took from someplace else.

I said in my previous comment that I thought it was very cool you were telling a story that was in the vein of Aliens. But I didn't expect that you would actually be telling Aliens itself, albeit with only a few differences.

Certain touches I really liked, like the Weytundi Corporation. Even the use of the Aliens motion sensors was, I thought, a really cool touch. Like I said, I have no problem with homage - within limits.

But when the even the characters are taken from Aliens - and we have very obvious versions of Gorman, Apone, Burke, Hudson, etc., it just becomes much less interesting to me than seeing your own world. Your fidelity to the source material has also resulted in a few minor story issues. For instance, I just don't buy at all that Nouk Kii would let himself be pushed around by the Viceroy like that. He's a damn Jedi, a representative of the government, on a mission to rescue a huge number of people. I don't think he'd take a back seat at any point and let the money-men order him around.

In Aliens, Ripley had no real rank or authority at all, but Nouk Kii certainly does and he wouldn't need to hang back as he does - even briefly - before entering the fray. I think it could have been damn cool to see scenes of him leading the commandos into the station. And it would have given your story a much-needed sense of freshness.

Now, all that said, despite of what I think is a pretty significant hindrance, it is impossible not to enjoy this series. It is still LOTS OF FUN, despite my issues with it. Partly because you happen to be copying a terrific template, but also because you're just darn good at this.

I know you said you got help with some customs and some FX work, but the production values here are really lovely. A few minor issues, as others have pointed out. Yeah, the lighting is amazingly cool and creepy in some shots, but a little too bright in others. But generally, this is a great looking series in addition to everything else.

I don't want to be too much of a downer here. But, as with Jason's "Full Metal Jacket" chapter, I really don't have much interest in seeing the photonovel version of a movie I already know. I want to see what YOU can do. And I know from experience that you can do a helluva lot.

Seeing that I'm not that familiar with the Aliens movies, I don't know what is and is not "original" ideas. But either way, it's still very entertaining for me and I have had a lot of fun with the series.

Good work! I think I was blown away simply by the fact that you have so many of those Ep. 1 bounty hunters to customize (can't think of the character's name). I also love the way you have the darkness with the lights shining from their backbacks.

There were certain areas I didn't know if they were suppose to be serious or funny, but it just caught me as humorous having Salacious Crumb in those tubes!

I am just a simple consumer of these novells, so have little to add on technique's.Just want to say I really like the look of the marine's and appreciate the story line. The jedi could be more dominant, even though he is a young one.I recognized Aliens right on (seen it 8 times. Am I a sinner now? ) But I also do hope you take the story into another direction. Maybe droids that go for their own kind and use the warmth of living creatures as batteries! Or is that been done as well...? A cool twitch would be if they stumble upon a vile subplot of Palpetine. Experimenting on secret illegal battle creatures, like killer flies or so.Anyway: keep up the good work and don't neglect to glue all the edges down.